Target Market: NOT Me
The building in which I work contains the magazine Good Housekeeping. Those who grew up paging through their mother's subscription to GH (and wondering why in the world anyone would care about how to bake clafouti or polish silver) may be familiar with the "Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval."
To GH's credit, the seal is not something they slap on any old product that advertisers ask them to. Products with a GH seal actually undergo rigorous testing in GH's test kitchens and labs, and if you don't believe me, come have lunch sometime and I'll take you to the 29th floor, where that part of GH is housed. On any given day you'll find an army of GH employees repeatedly vacuuming little patches of carpet or determining JUST HOW MANY washes a towel can undergo before it falls apart in your hands. On busier days around here, I gaze longingly through the GH window and dream of working in the test labs. Instead of staying on top of the 2.3 million tasks currently associated with launching the website I'm working on, I could spend all day frying egg after egg in a quest to determine the most slippery nonstick surface.
Anyway. Because they test all kinds of products, there are frequently weird little gadgets and gizmos laying around, and they're often the kind of stuff you might see on TBS infomercials if you stayed up late enough on a Tuesday.
The other day when I walked by, I saw such a gadget, named the "Wave Box." The Wave Box is a portable microwave that can be powered by battery or the cigarette lighter space in a car. This is all well and good. But what scared me was the picture on the back of the box: A bald, bespectacled man sitting in his car, the Wave Box firmly perched in the passenger seat, shoving a sandwich inside of the machine.
It was an awfully sad picture, and nothing has ever made me happier that I do not live in an exurb of Dallas.
To GH's credit, the seal is not something they slap on any old product that advertisers ask them to. Products with a GH seal actually undergo rigorous testing in GH's test kitchens and labs, and if you don't believe me, come have lunch sometime and I'll take you to the 29th floor, where that part of GH is housed. On any given day you'll find an army of GH employees repeatedly vacuuming little patches of carpet or determining JUST HOW MANY washes a towel can undergo before it falls apart in your hands. On busier days around here, I gaze longingly through the GH window and dream of working in the test labs. Instead of staying on top of the 2.3 million tasks currently associated with launching the website I'm working on, I could spend all day frying egg after egg in a quest to determine the most slippery nonstick surface.
Anyway. Because they test all kinds of products, there are frequently weird little gadgets and gizmos laying around, and they're often the kind of stuff you might see on TBS infomercials if you stayed up late enough on a Tuesday.
The other day when I walked by, I saw such a gadget, named the "Wave Box." The Wave Box is a portable microwave that can be powered by battery or the cigarette lighter space in a car. This is all well and good. But what scared me was the picture on the back of the box: A bald, bespectacled man sitting in his car, the Wave Box firmly perched in the passenger seat, shoving a sandwich inside of the machine.
It was an awfully sad picture, and nothing has ever made me happier that I do not live in an exurb of Dallas.
posted by Had To Move at 10:31 AM
1 Comments:
Oh, sad. I'm going to think of this whenever I think I miss living in the Midwest. It's kind of like this thing (http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/japan/japanese-toast+coffee+egg+maker-221399.php), which I loved until I visualized a sad bachelor fryin' up some sausage and eggs for one.
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